9 Dos & 8 Don'ts For Handling Mystery Text Messages

"Hey! How have you been?" You just got a perfectly innocuous text. You'd normally reply back with something like, "I'm good! Just got back from visiting my parents." (Cute.) But, you can't do that, because you have no idea who this friendly texter is.

What do you do? What do you say? Do you play along, like you totally know who this mystery person is, and risk making plans with a total rando? Relax. Here are nine ways to gracefully handle a text message from an unknown sender with as little pain and embarrassment as possible — plus eight things you should avoid.